


Everybody Lets You Down

by sister_dear



Series: Screaming Out a Love Song [5]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Arguing, Bisexual Character, Disabled Character, Drug Addiction, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Just lots of arguing, Multi, No sex in this one, Open Relationships, Pansexual Character, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 18:31:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7694923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_dear/pseuds/sister_dear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ada sucks in a harsh breath as the glass lifts. She leans forward, drops her elbows onto her knees and allows her head to hang. The exaggerated recline of the chair makes the position look incredibly uncomfortable. Cait crouches so she can reach under the glass and put a hand on Ada’s shoulder, worried that she’s about to puke or faint. Mac is standing a wary distance away, ever watchful, Amari hovering on the other side of the pod. </p><p>No one is saying anything.</p><p>“How do you feel?” Amari finally ventures. </p><p>Ada responds with a harsh laugh, scrubs her hand over her face. She seems to be speaking more to herself than them when she says “That’s it then.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everybody Lets You Down

**Author's Note:**

> Rated for Cait's drug addiction and dirty mouth.

Amari wakes Valentine first. Cait and MacCready stand silently by as she checks him over. Cait can’t help herself, goes to stand at the side of Ada’s memory pod while they wait. She leans on the glass, watching the still figure within rather than listen to the quiet conversation happening on the other side of the room. Kellog’s jacket - now hers - bunches around her armpits and elbows when she crosses her arms, a still-unfamiliar weight around her shoulders. The memory of Ada pulling it off his cooling corpse is still vivid, fresh in her mind. The way Ada held it up against her own shoulders critically, the seams in far better repair than anything any of them was wearing, no repeated attempts to patch the elbows and a minimum of frayed edges. Clearly too narrow in the shoulders for Ada and just as clearly too large for Mac, she’d bunched it up and tossed it at Cait.

Cait has been wearing it ever since. It is a very nice jacket.

“I’ll wake her now,” Amari announces. Cait shifts her weight off of the pod, steps back just enough to be out of the way.

Ada sucks in a harsh breath as the glass lifts. She leans forward, drops her elbows onto her knees and allows her head to hang. The exaggerated recline of the chair makes the position look incredibly uncomfortable. Cait crouches so she can reach under the glass and put a hand on Ada’s shoulder, worried that she’s about to puke or faint. Mac is standing a wary distance away, ever watchful, Amari hovering on the other side of the pod.

No one is saying anything.

“How do you feel?” Amari finally ventures.

Ada responds with a harsh laugh, scrubs her hand over her face. She seems to be speaking more to herself than them when she says “That’s it then.”

“What?” That from Mac. Cait looks at him over her shoulder, sees the same confusion she feels reflected in his scowl.

Ada pulls her face out of her hand without actually lifting her head, makes little flicking motions with it while still staring at the space between her knees. Cait steps back obligingly, giving Ada room to push herself out of the memory pod.

Whatever emotion might have been on Ada’s face is hidden by the time she straightens. She nods to Amari. “Thank you for your time, doctor.”

“We calling it quits, then?” Cait asks cautiously. Stopping halfway through a job like this is not something Ada does without damn good reason.

“You don’t need to give up yet,” Amari urges. Cait feels a surge of irrational anger towards the woman. She saw what Ada saw. She knows what happened while Cait is powerless, trying to guess at what to say. “The Institute scientist. Dr Virgil. He may be able to help you find your son.”

Ada shakes her head. It’s a short, violent jerk, like a dog with a bloody limb. “No.”

No?

“What?” Mac practically shouts it this time, stepping forward with fists clenched.

Cait thinks she ought to be angry, too, but the comfort that fury usually brings is all caught up in her chest, knotted around a ball of hurt and bewilderment. The only family Ada ever spoke of was a former lover, Nora, and that Ada was going to find the man who’d murdered her. No hint of a son in the picture until Valentine started asking questions. It’s one of the only times Cait can remember seeing Ada hesitate. She’d glanced at them, Cait and Mac, waiting off to the side, their arms crossed and shoulders touching. She appeared to make a decision, and laid bare an aspect of her history that Cait, at least, had not been expecting.

Cait assumed Ada never mentioned Shaun because she was protecting him, challenged the hurt she felt at not being trusted by telling herself that everyone has secrets. Everyone is protecting something. Some soft underbelly. Now, though. Cait finds herself suddenly uncertain about her initial assumptions for Ada’s silence on the topic.

“If he’s happy and he’s healthy then the Institute is taking better care of him than I would. He’s better off where he is.”

“He’s where?” Cait has to squeeze the question past the lump in her throat. That. That does change things. Not that she’s afraid of them. Just. No comes back from there. Ever. No one even knows where the Institute is.

Mac is focused on something entirely different. “He’s your son.” His brows are furrowed, his voice rough with fury.

“No, he’s Nora’s son,” Ada returns just as harshly. And maybe she’s even more affected by the trip through that memory pod than she’s letting on, because she’s using the nasty tone normally reserved for clients trying to cheat them out of their pay. Cait nudges her shoulder. The lighting down here isn’t good enough to see Ada’s eyes behind her sunglasses. But the way she stops, tilts her head back and sucks in a breath, suggests she’s closed them.

She has a slightly better reign on her temper when she says, face still pointed towards the ceiling. “What do you want me to do, Mac? He’s healthy. Safe.”

Mac is not appeased. His eyes are narrow slits, his shoulders rigid. “You’re trusting what you saw in the memory of a man so bloodthirsty even the Gunners think twice about going up against him.”

Ada loses her carefully collected temper in an instant. She leans forward, jabs her finger into her own chest. “I. Am not. Mother material.”

The knot in Cati’s chest unwinds all at once. This. This she understands. She’s still a little angry. Still hurt. But. She recognizes this fear. She feels it in herself every time she sees a stranger with a child and tries to picture herself in that role. Fear of resenting the kid. Being tied down.

Turning out like her parents.

She slips her hand into Ada’s, glad when Ada lets her draw their hands down. Her fingers relax into Cait’s, their hands clasped loosely between them.

“He was Nora’s,” Ada repeats, calmer. “She wanted a kid, one of her guys was willing, and I told her I didn’t mind. But Shaun was _Nora’s_. He was never going to be mine.”

Mac stares at her. His eyes drop to their entwined fingers, to the way they stand side by side. Cait thinks too late that this appears an obvious taking of sides. He spins on his heel without another word, radiating anger from the stiff line of his shoulders to the way he stomps hard on each individual step as he disappears up the stairs. Ada slumps back against the memory pod. Lets go of Cait’s hand to push up her sunglasses just enough to rub at the bridge of her nose.

Cait hesitates, because she still thinks Ada is sicker than she’s letting on. But Ada has Amari, who is better equipped than Cait to actually do something if Ada suddenly keels over. Mac needs someone too. “I’m going after him.”

Ada jerks her chin, flicks her fingers. _Fine. Go._

“We’re not done.”

Ada nods. Cait gives her shoulder a businesslike pat and bounds up the stairs after Mac.

She fully expects she’ll have to chase him all the way to the Third Rail, but he hasn’t gone nearly that far. Cait gets back up to the ground floor and hears footsteps above her, looks up the next flight to see Mac turning around at the top of the landing, moving back out of sight. She climbs up after him.

He’s striding back and forth in the short hall at the top of the stairs. He looks up when she leans against the rail but doesn’t stop pacing.

She doesn’t try to force him to face her. If he wants to talk, he’ll talk. Only the longer she waits, the more his shoulders hitch up around his ears. Cait listens to the low voiced murmur of Irma talking to someone below, the quick creak when Mac steps on old floorboards. He looks about like she feels. Emotions all twisted up. He keeps stopping, looking as if he’s about speak, then apparently changing his mind and spinning away again.

On the next pass, Cait hooks her arm through his, tries the handle on the door behind him. It isn’t locked. She pulls them both inside. It’s a bedroom. Empty. All the Den’s inhabitants are downstairs. Cait leaves the door open, props her hip against the desk. Mac shifts over to the bed but doesn’t sit. This is the best they can do for privacy.

“Come on then.” She tries to catch his eye, but he’s stubbornly looking anywhere but at her. “What’s this about?”

Nothing but continued stony silence. Her back stiffens up in hurt despite herself. She’s no good at this mushy crap. “Fine,” she snaps, turning back to the door. “You ever decide you want to tell me, I’m easy enough to find.”

“Cait, it’s not.” He throws an arm out, pulls it back quickly as though he’s given something away. But then he doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He starts to cross his arms and stops. Toys with his belt, eyes darting around the room. They land on the valuables, the exit. Habit. “I thought she was-” He stops, shakes his head. “Nevermind. It’s stupid.”

He’s all drawn in on himself. Head down, shoulders hunched. Cait crosses the room. He watches her come but doesn’t back away, even when she grabs the back of his neck and stoops down so she can knock her forehead against his with relative gentleness. She pulls back a little so she can see his face, not letting go of his neck. He’s blinking at her, wide-eyes and off guard. She feels a rush of affection. Ada sees eye to eye with both of them on most things, but then stuff like this happens. Sharp reminder that she’s not actually from here. Cait and Mac. They know what it’s like to grow up in a world where you have to fight for even the most basic of necessities. Where anything can be taken from you at any time.

“I know I’m not the brightest girl. But I’ve had your back, and you’ve had mine, and in my book that would make us friends even if we weren’t shagging too.” She loses the words, flounders.

But it’s enough, thank fuck. Mac finally spits the words out. Looking at her mouth, not her eyes, since she won’t let him loose enough to turn his head away.

“I have a son. Name’s Duncan. He’s sick. I looked for a cure in Capital Wasteland, couldn’t find one. Came here to keep looking.” Every short, sharp sentence is like knives into her chest.

Secrets. Secrets and secrets. Secrets he’s now told her but not Ada.

“Shite, Mac,” she breathes. No wonder he’d been so pissed. She kind of wants to punch something too. Her hand flexes. The muscles in his neck jump and tremble. She can’t punch a disease. She can’t protect a kid who’s miles away.

“You gonna tell her? You should.”

“Not yet.” Finally he meets her eyes. “Cait. I mean it. Not yet.”

“Why? Because you’re mad?”

Now he pulls away. She lets her hand slide off his neck, holds his shoulder so he doesn’t go too far. Doesn’t want him to close off again now she’s got him talking. “Back off, Cait,” he barks.

“Fine. I won’t tell her. But you need to.”

He flattens his hands down over his cap, pulling on the brim, eyes darting around. “Not here.”

Heavy footsteps on the stairs below. Ada coming up from the basement. Cait is out of time to convince him. She gives in with ill grace.

“Fine. But later, Mac. Promise.”

“Fine, Cait. I will,” he adds at her suspicious look.

Ada’s footsteps pass their staircase, heading for the front room. Cait gives Mac’s shoulder a final squeeze and heads down, grateful that he follows without her having to pull him along. Because she will, if she has to.

She turns the corner into the main room just in time to hear Valentine say in a voice not his own, “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

“Yes. You should have.” Ada ignores the detective’s subsequent confusion, hands him a bag of caps. “For your time.”

Valentine takes them, but reluctantly, puts the metal hand out slow so Ada can drop the bag into it. “This doesn’t have to be the end of the road.”

Ada shakes her head dismissively. “Nora’s murderer is dead. Her kid is alive and healthy. We’ve accomplished all we needed to here.”

“You know, you’ve come the closest of anyone I know of to finding the Institute.” He phrases it almost like a question.

“I’m not actually suicidal, Valentine.” Ada’s feet are planted wide and confrontational, jaw stubbornly tight. “You have the same information I do. If you know someone who can do something with it, be my guest. Until then, I’m done. You ever get a job that needs some extra muscle, you know who to call. Just leave me out of your politics.”

Nick’s plastic face is set in as deep a frown as he’s capable of. MacCready is practically vibrating in agitation at her back. No one here is happy.

Cait needs a hit. Her veins itch with it. Too much arguing, not enough actual fighting makes anxiety run through her with no where to go, winding her up. The psycho turns it to something she can use, but without the drug the adrenaline just stacks and stacks, makes her head spin and her hands tingle and drives the air from her lungs.

She can’t shoot up here. Neither Mac or Ada mind the drugs, but she thinks they would worry if the knew just how often she’s been doing it. At least, She likes to think they’d worry. She’s worried about herself.

“If we’re done here, I could use a drink,” she says loudly. Ada’s shoulders relax a fraction, weight shifting so she looks less like she’s about to take Valentine to the ground. Mac won’t look at Ada but nods his head in agreement with Cait’s suggestion. Crisis averted, Cait thinks. For now.

-

Ada doesn’t ask how Cait and Mac’s conversation went, except to wait until they’re back on the road and it’s Mac’s turn to take point. She tilts her sunglasses down with one finger so she can meet Cait’s eyes and shoot a silent question at his back. Cait shrugs, makes a vague gesture with her hands that she hopes conveys ‘ask him your own damn self.’ Ada pushes her sunglasses back into place and keeps walking.

-

The rule is, no arguments when they’re on the job. Good way to get you and your companions killed. So things aren’t settled, but they clear out Pickman’s Gallery with brutal efficiency and minimum conversation. It’s difficult to get true privacy on the road. When they make camp that night Cait overhears Ada’s stilted apology for yelling. Mac accepts with equally ill grace and doesn’t breathe a word about Duncan. Everyone goes to sleep in their own separate bedrolls.

They return to Goodneighbor to tell Hancock their findings. MacCready disappears as soon as they’ve collected their pay, muttering something about getting a drink. Instead of heading off to find her own companionship for the night, as she usually does in Goodneighbor, Cait follows Ada to the Rexford. She drops her pack on the floor as soon as they make it up to their room, squares off against Ada with hands on her hips. The short trip has given her time to think, to let the hurt settle. She finds she has only one question, stewing in the back of her mind ever since that conversation in Valentine’s office.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Ada scratches the back of her neck. “Wasn’t sure what you’d think of having kids around. Children complicate things.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Ada.”

Ada’s face twists up. She looks pissed. She always looks pissed when she’s afraid. Cait doesn’t back down. She might have let something like this go back when they first met, back when they only used each other for occasional pleasure. But it’s different now that Cait has told Ada about her parents and Ada has told Cait where she’s really from. They need to clear this so it doesn’t fester. “I would ruin the kid, Cait. I would - I wouldn’t be good at it.”

Cait socks her on the shoulder, hard enough to bruise. Ada can take it, and she deserves the lesson. “Next time tell me, you great lump.”

-

The entire trip home, Mac and Ada exchange only stiff, stilted conversation. Mac still hasn’t told Ada why he became so upset. Ada’s pride keeps her from asking. They won’t stop snipping at each other. They are doing their best to leave Cait out of it, so she does her best to return the favor, but the tension is enough to have her sneaking shots of psycho whenever their backs are turned. That, of course, just winds her own temper. If this goes on much longer she’s going to go off on both of them.

-

The day after their return to Hangman’s Alley, Cait catches the edges of an argument over the white noise of the generator. She comes down from the upper story shack to find Mac and Ada finally having it out. They’re squared off, Ada towering over Mac and him all bristled up and glaring.

“What did I do?” Ada demands as Cait stops on the bottom step.

“You know what.”

“Is this about Shaun?”

“What do you think?”

“You want me to take the kid away from whoever his parents are now? You want to be his Dad?”

Cait can’t help the air she sucks over her teeth. Mac’s face goes from red to purple.

“Maybe I could! What makes you think I’d be such a bad father, huh?”

“What?” Ada shouts it. Her hand comes up sharply, pointed finger right in his face. “When the hell did I say that?”

Mac slaps her hand away, stomping up the stairs to one of the smaller shacks they keep around for when one of them doesn’t feel like sleeping with the other two. There’s a tarp curtain rather than a door to slam, but the walls vibrate with a sharp bang anyway. One of the storage trunks receiving a solid kick.

Ada swears loudly. She paces a few tight circles, making violent gestures with her hand. By the fifth pass she’s worked off some of the steam and comes to an uncertain halt, finally looking at Cait.

“I stepped in some shit, huh.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“What did he tell you that he won’t tell me?”

Cait shakes her head. She promised. “You should go tell him you’re an idiot and you’re sorry.”

“Thought I did.”

“Tell him again.”

Ada lets out a sharp breath. “Right.” She pulls her sunglasses off. Folds them by pressing the arms against her collar bone, hooks them over the neck of her shirt. She eyes the shack like it’s full of ferals. Cait gives her a shove, a twisted little smile she hopes is reassuring.

It’s an hour before Ada reappears.

When she comes back out, there’s some kind of carved wooden toy in her hand. She slumps bonelessly into one of the chairs by the fire barrel. Cait comes over, lets her hip bump against Ada’s shoulder. Ada tilts her head so it’s resting against Cait’s side.

“He tell you?”

“Yeah.”

“Everything?”

“If by everything you mean that the kid’s sick? Yeah.”

“We going?”

“We’re going.”

-

Four days later, they emerge from the basement of Med-Tek, blinking in the sudden harsh sunlight and with one fragile vial of medicine wrapped in as many protective layers as they can manage. It’s tucked into Mac’s pack, because Duncan is his son but also because his pack tends to take the least number of bumps and scrapes when they run into trouble. He’s near vibrating in place. His hands keep moving as if he wants to reach back and touch his pack and is just barely stopping himself. Cait, still jumped up on adrenaline and psycho and feeling better than she has in days - a good fight was just what she needed to shake the tension of the past week’s arguments - resists the urge to take the pack away from him. He’s going to give away that they’re carrying something valuable if he doesn’t knock it off. “We need to get to Daisy as fast as possible,” he says, already turning towards the fastest route to Goodneighbor.

“Hold up,” Ada stops them both. Her face is twisted up as if she’s just eaten something rotten, her fingers drumming on the handle of her sword. Cait can see how much it costs her to force her hand still, meet both of their eyes in turn.

“Look. I am not mother material- stop and listen, Mac, dammit.” She glares until he settles, his arms crossed and face set in a mulish scowl. “I’m going to tell you two the same thing I told Nora. If you, either of you, want a kid around, you say so, and we’ll work it out. Just. Don’t expect me to be Mom. I mean it. Got it?”

Mac nods. He still doesn’t look entirely happy, jaw tense. Cait smiles, links one arm through Ada’s elbow and throws the other across Mac’s shoulders, pulling her lovers close. She feels unbearably soppy all of a sudden. Mac grunts at the tight squeeze. Cait uses her grip to turn him so she can lean down and kiss him deeply, trusting Ada to watch their backs. She lets him loose so she can do the same to Ada.

She’s not sure she wants to be Mom either. Got a few things to figure out. But. It’s good to know where they stand. She turns back to Mac with a broad grin.

“So. Mac. When do we get to meet this kid of yours?”


End file.
